


Land of Lies

by elanor_BleuNoir



Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Related, M/M, Romance, Rough Sex, but all ends well, follows the tone of the japanese version more than it does the english one, men who communicate only with swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:46:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28288665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanor_BleuNoir/pseuds/elanor_BleuNoir
Summary: Olberic first detested his desire for Erhardt because they were brother-in-arms; then, because they were not.
Relationships: Olberic Eisenberg/Erhardt
Kudos: 14





	Land of Lies

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [谎言之境](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28289751) by [elanor_BleuNoir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanor_BleuNoir/pseuds/elanor_BleuNoir)



> A little extension of Olberic Chapter 3, about what happened before and after their reunion.
> 
> I tried to build these characters as canonical as possible, but I do realize (after consulting the chapter's English version for the first time to get the accurate quote) that the original Japanese version - which I played - had its script's undertone differ slightly from the English translations. Essentially, while the English version looked as if Olberic was considering to kill Erhardt (and even to end his pain through killing him) when he challenged the latter to a duel, the Japanese version never suggested this way. Olberic never called Erhardt a monster, and the duel for him was a means for protecting and re-accepting Erhardt into his life.
> 
> And Erhardt had more pain than hatred in his tone when he talked about the ruin of Hornburg. The voice didn't sound as violent, and sounded a lot more self-loathing.
> 
> Those are the biggest differences in tone I could sense, but I've attached a rough literal translation of the relevant script in the end notes in case anyone happens to be interested in reading them.
> 
> (Also, I have to say that Erhardt's Japanese voice was so extremely cute and waaaay more emotional than the English one... everyone needs to check it out <3)

_“And yet, though they were a lie… A strange thing, isn’t it? The memories of those days are as real as anything I have.”_

_\--Erhardt, Olberic’s Chapter 3_

Olberic first detested his desire for Erhardt because they were brother-in-arms; then, because they were not. Passion would come easy, he thought, idly and occasionally, whenever he still had the mood to let Highland mountain winds blow through his greying strands of hair, allowing him a brief moment to be immersed in memory. These winds were chillier than any he had known, any when serving as a knight. Different from the winds tainted by battle smokes, always somehow connected in his memory to the clamor of armor and sword. A clamor that, would just so casually kindle a flame among young knights, then only twenty-or-so years of age, making them prone to fall under small acts of intimacy, to touching, fondling and kissing.

And he tried extremely hard to not remember Erhardt's kisses after all these years.

Or, more than kisses. There were times he woke up in the middle of the night in his cramped one-bed lodging to dreams as sticky and scorching as sun-bathed battlefields, to the lingering feeling of another's weight on him, another's warmth next to him, another's tresses of golden locks falling gracefully on his bare shoulders. Another's hand, deliberately yet tauntingly sliding under his shirt, untucking it, following his waistline down.

 _Erhardt,_ he would breathe, _Don't._ Then the Knight of Blazing Sword would look at him, head tilted, a playful, inquiring spark in his eyes: _Really?_

And then he would let it be.

Guilt would always exist as much as pleasure even back then, back when he thought their connection was unadulterated by nothing but the vile passion very few youths can break free from in their lives. The connection itself was pure; the fact they were knights made it impure. But he battled with those thoughts, giving himself in to Erhardt and his irresistable attractiveness each time, bending his unbending blade. They never spoke of what they were, and Olberic still had some distant image of the untainted, somewhat only platonic brothers-in-arm, only occasionally overcome by the guilt accompanying pleasure that made him detest himself a little. For starting it, after all.

For being the first to walk over that line after as much intoxication that would push him there, for not being able to resist the sight of alcohol dripping down Erhardt's defined jawline as the other man's emerald-green eyes shined intensely gazing at him, dripping down into his loosely tied-up collar, disappering into the subtle shape of lean muscles on his chest. For then grabbing him by said loose collar and kissing him with full force on his lips. He detested the guilt that hit almost simultaneously as pleasure that moment, when their eyes locked, their lips met, their tongues beginning to chase each other immediately.

He just didn't know Erhardt detested it as much as he did.

As for betrayal – that was already years after. When it first happened, he just could not understand. But years after the years after, when he finally heard Erhardt tell the reasons of betrayal, the stories of his past, Olberic could not help but feel the blunt pain in his chest. A blunt pain that exists not for his lost king and kingdom – for what is lost already could not be retrieved – but for he finally understood that the passion known as hatred had long ago been planted within his brother-in-arms, way before they first met.

Just as Erhardt said, all the time they spent together, he had been overwhelmed by hate.

And everything that happened might had been but sweetly feigned lies.

But were they _just_ lies? He couldn’t help but think. In the first real encounter between swords after those eight long years, he finally and once again saw the light in Erhardt’s eyes. From the pair of eyes that had been avoiding his gaze until then shone, for the first time, the light that – just as before – followed his sword, his face, his self wherever he went. A sensation that had not changed, an impulse that first only belonged to youths but somehow happened to remain, even after ten or so years. Or, more accurately, a desire. A desire to be side-by-side. A desire for warmth. For intimacy.

 _The sword does not lie_ , said Erhardt.

The more confused Olberic was, the more he wanted to confirm this desire, to confirm Erhardt’s thoughts, to confirm _his own_ thoughts. But being in a duel did not gave him much room to think otherwise, so he just let his blade follow his intuition, nothing but victory on his mind. As for the inexplicable satisfactory relief when the fight was over – he did not want to think more of what it actually was.

To the core of it, both he and Erhardt were never men who do things by thinking. They communicated with swords, with their bodies, with the most direct means. Because no one but themselves understood each other’s own habits and hints as well, even if hatred had been somewhere between, even if their well-built relationship was, from its very start, nothing but an intricate lie.

So when the fight was over they walked out of the cave together in front of all the soldiers in Wellspring, as if their relationship had always been as well as it seemed, and lightly announced that the city had been saved. When the name they once knew, the Twin Blades of Hornburg, was once again brought by someone else he looked at Erhardt, who did nothing but slightly pursed his lips and closed his eyes, as if nothing happened before and between those eight long years.

And when they reunited with Olberic’s travel companions they went, without saying, to the tavern. The atmosphere was friendly to the extent of awkwardness. But obviously most did not find it awkward, as Ophilia slightly blushed after Erhardt greeted her in the most courteous manner, Primrose passed around some light jokes about Olberic swimming with a mysterious smile on her face, and Alfyn approached with a full cup of mead insisting that the Blazing Blade drink with him to the bottom of his barrel. Olberic barely put the apothecary down into his seat when he turned around and found Cyrus to have already obliviously begun an academic interview regarding Hornburg’s history.

“Many years later, the scholars will for sure attempt to analyze to the best of their efforts the causes of Hornburg’s demise. I can even envision the sight of several schools debating back and forth.” He heard Cyrus’s voice across the bustling crowds in the tavern. “If you would like, something like an autobiography would be a most precious primary source.”

Olberic’s heart sank for a bit. He immediately walked towards Erhardt, and heard the other man chuckle.

“Is that so? Then it shall not be too bad a thing to consider. But I have only known the life of a knight for all those years, and have never prided myself in words. Compared to trying to exonerate my deeds using words, I’d rather say that even I get remembered by the world under the name of Erhardt the Kingslayer, I find it unnecessary to defend myself.”

Olberic’s heard fully sank. He found his mind go blank all of a sudden, and the blunt pain in his chest suddenly all too sharp to be ignored.

“But you are not – ”

“Erhardt.” He stepped in, putting his hand on his old friend’s shoulders, but managed to say nothing but the other man’s name.

“…Leave it be, Olberic, I think I know what you want to say… and you too, Professor Albright.” Erhardt took another sip from the cup of absinthe in his hands, and his voice sounded coarser when he opened his mouth again. “What happened in the past is undeniable truth. How history shall be understood, be written… that already has nothing to do with me. I am but carrying the weight of my own deeds.”

 _But Erhardt had not done wrong,_ Olberic thought out of nowhere, and he immediately wiped away that thought again. Had Erhardt done wrong? Aye, he most surely had. He became the last straw to break this kingdom. But had the young Erhardt, watching his home burn to the ground, done anyone wrong, when pure hatred sprouted that one moment from his chest? Olberic suddenly found everything inexplicable and frustrating, the most frustrating being him understanding his own inability to change the predetermined ending, for the Erhardt he had known for all the time they spent together was but lies.

Cyrus seemed to understood his unspoken words, so he only nodded politely. “I understand… Excuse me, then, for my inquiry. I see it is drawing closer to the time we have to rest… But of course, Sir Erhardt, anytime if it suits your heart, I wish you know that there will always be one in Atlasdam willing to listen to your story as unbiasedly as one can be.”

“That I have understood… Thank you.” Erhardt calmly responded, and nodded to Cyrus bidding them goodnight. Olberic looked around the tavern to find his travel companions leaving for the night one by one, leaving only him and Erhardt gazing at each other in the corner of the tavern under dim lights.

“…Erhardt.”

“…Olberic.”

They almost simultaneously pronounced each other’s names, and after one moment of silence in the air, Erhardt dropped his gaze and lightly chuckled.

“I know what you are thinking.” He said.

Olberic looked at him.

“Not lies.”

Olberic’s pupils swiftly tightened, but he only kept looking at the other man. Erhardt’s blond hair seemed even lusher than when they’ve parted ways in the one battle destroying their kingdom, as they fell on his shoulders in a slightly disheveled way.

“…I, too, have thought about it many times. But after all, I think it should not have been untrue. The sword does not lie… Even if my life as a knight was but a land of lies I weaved for myself, even if I have gazed as everything with much hate as love back then, all these things… they were not lies.”

He finally raised his eyes so they met Olberic’s, and the latter found his thoughts lost in a trance for a moment, found this tavern scene way too familiar. He closed his eyes as that face he had always found irresistible – both back then and now – drew closer, and the next second, a sigh carrying the faint fragrance of absinthe fell upon his lips.

Perhaps their first time was the only time started by himself, Olberic thought. Even when both of them might have regretted it as it happened, once they tasted that certain kind of joy they could not get rid of it from their lives. So there came the second time. And then the third time. Then many, many times.

They had once embraced under the moon of a kingdom that was no longer, kissed amidst twirling mists of dust, tangled up and lost themselves together in narrow camp tents, suppressing their noise. Perhaps that lingering distaste and guilt also became addictive, just like the bitter yet rich fragrance of absinthe between their lips in every night when intoxication was allowed.

When desire had turned into fantasy for too long, one can never get used to its true form upon its sudden return. Olberic gazed at Erhardt, now sitting on top of him, watching him push aside the sweat-drenched golden locks that fell on his forehead, pull away his waistbelt, panting – he felt, all of a sudden, a strange desolation.

“Get down.” The weight on his body shifted, and he heard Erhardt hiss a command. In the depth of those emerald eyes now reflect a dark, voluminous desire he had barely seen before, and Erhardt’s movements were no longer soft, but rough and heedless. This might have been the first time Erhardt is commanding him like this, he thought, or is it not? After all they have always taken turns satisfying each other in the past, but this had been the first time he received such a command without any prior communication.

 _Is it that they still could not forgive each other?_ He suddenly thought. Or, rather – will they _ever_ be able to forgive each other in this lifetime?

He did not even know the answer from his own end. He understood that, just like he could never go back to his untainted and hopeful twenty-year-old self, Erhardt could never go back to those moments untouched by connotations of darkness. Whether it was a sharp hate back then or the empty anguish post his revenge, Erhardt had never been that pure, glorious, impeccable knight he envisioned him to be. From its very beginning, this never-fully-defined relationship had always been the one trace of truth that struggled to survive between the cracks of a lie.

But swords never lie, and maybe kisses as well. Perhaps the pain, now entering his body, does correspond to a certain truthful emotion, but the soft kisses falling between his hair and by his ears felt real as well. As if they were there to contrast the harsh, blazing, violent pleasure almost splitting his body in half, those kisses, softer than feather, seemed a compensation for something that had never happened – never supposed to exist – in their never-endingly tangled-up relationship.

“Olberic, I – aghh – ” Erhardt’s voice trembled, suppressing his uneven breath and what pain that might had been deep down. He thrusted harder, and Olberic, while letting himself moan with the other man in unison like any other time eight years ago, managed to squeeze out several fragmented words he felt a necessity to say.

“I was to accept you, Er…hardt. Just like… ahh, just like what I said back then in the cave. So.. ha, so it if makes your pain ease this way, do as… as you please…”

 _…And I shall not blame you for that._ That he did not say. Many years after they began that stealthy kiss under the moon, he finally felt, for the first time, the absence of guilt that always accompanied pleasure. The kingdom was no more, nor was his role as a knight, and for the first time in forever, he felt something close to redemption as he unconditionally took in Erhardt’s pain, absorbing it, taking it in with his own body.

_Not lies._

Everything that happened between them – not lies.

Erhardt did not end up traveling alongside him to Riverford, but that had already been expected. They had both found places they needed to be, places they would not easily leave.

But if – Olberic thought, only if – they could once again fight next to each other, even after all these years, even when all had changed, it should still be something worth writing into history.

He even thought of the perfect answer for Cyrus. If Erhardt had to be remembered by the world by the name of Kingslayer, then the world ought to also read from history books how the Twin Blades of Hornburg reunited, completing together the grand task of redemption and protection. Covering up the preexisting truth not with lies, but with yet another layer of truths.

When he stepped out of the oasis the desert winds blew across his face, through his greying strands of hair. Tressa mumbled something about how hard it was to travel with weight in such scorching weather, and he suddenly realized the winds here had been warmer than any he had known. The desert had never been connected to any significant memories, so at that moment he allowed himself to be immersed in just a fleeting desire for the future, a distant future of meeting again under the same sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Rough literal translations of the relevant Japanese script, in case anyone's interested:
> 
> Right after slaying the Lizardmen:  
> E: Why have you come here, Olberic?  
> O: I asked Gustav.  
> (note that he asked *why*, and Olberic just diverted the topic...)
> 
> Erhardt, right after telling Olberic that even as he killed King Alfred, the king looked him in the eye:  
> O: His Majesty was a noble man.  
> E: So he was. But the king... such a king like him... I... Under the excuse of vengeance, I slayed... slayed him! (and here he used the phrase "koroshite shimatta" which basically means "it should not have been this way, but the worst result happend; I did it wrong." The Japanese voice here was also SO GOOD. Erhardt was very evidently on the verge of crying on this line.)  
> E: But after the quest was complete, all that remained was emptiness, not even a trace of fulfillment...  
> E: Not only so... I also often recounted the days, the years I spent as a knight...!  
> O: Did you regret it?  
> E: Regret...? Aye, it should be that I did. For the sake of vengeance, over those years I have lived in a lie.  
> E: Yet I keep thinking about those days, over and over.  
> (these two lines prompted me to write this fic in the first place)  
> E: The time I spent with you, together, in Hornburg...!
> 
> (and here the "challenge" field command pops out)
> 
> O: Draw your blade, Erhardt.  
> E: ...Olberic?  
> O: Let me take it.  
> (Olberic's theme song begins to play)  
> O: Your anger, hatred, sadness, anguish and emptiness -  
> O: Let my sword take them all, and cut them down.  
> O: For, just like you - I took up my sword once again for the sake of protecting others.  
> O: Erhardt... I could not understand your regrets, and could not give you mere forgiveness. I...  
> E: ......  
> O: Back then, I had to win. Only when I've won I could be able to protect. Either His Majesty - or you!  
> O: And especially because of that!  
> O: This time I won't lose! I will win victory, and accept you!  
> O: Draw your blade, Erhardt! You and I, we are men who can communicate only by swords!  
> E: (after laughing) Have you forgotten what happened then? But I would not say that. The sword does not lie. Once you draw it, you have to give it all... Do you know that?
> 
> (and then the fight happens)
> 
> So yeah, essentially, a lot gayer than what the English version's tone suggests... So much that I was actually surprised to see that Olberic called Erhardt a monster in the English version. My understanding is that he could not forgive what had happened, but he had meant to protect and accept Erhardt from the very beginning; it was also only after he learned how Erhardt is now protecting a new town, and after seeing their similarities after all the wanderings, that he found it necessary to meet Erhardt blade to blade, to resolve their issues in a way only they themselves understood. Such, perhaps, is the romance only men like them would know... ;)
> 
> But for anyone who read until here, thank you for reading and I hope you liked this piece!


End file.
